The longitudinal propagation of the normal zone in superconducting wires was experimentally investigated in order to evaluate existing analytical expressions which attempt to describe the propagation velocity in a more or less simple manner. The availability of a reliable expression is important for application in computer codes that calculate quench evolutions in superconducting magnets. We measured the propagation velocity as function of transport current and magnetic field in five different insulated NbTi superconductors having a copper, a copper-nickel or a mixed matrix. The comparison to calculated velocities using five existing models showed that large quantitative and qualitative differences exist.